Oil on canvas, 1878. 317x393 mm; 12½x15½ inches. Signed and dated in oil, and inscribed to the dedicatee, "H Sc." lower right recto.
Provenance: Hermann Sch--, the dedicatee, with the inscription, "Sei[nem] [Fre]unde [Her]rmann Sch [...] [Zur fre]undlichen Erinnerung Carl Moll" on a partial label on the stretcher verso; Kunstsalon Menzel, Salzburg, until 1977; Max Dasch, Salzburg; private collection; sold Tiberius Auctions, Vienna, November 14, 2023; private collection, Estonia.
Published: Cornelia Cabuk, Carl Moll Monografie und Werkverzeichnis, 2020, volume 11, page 108, number GE 1.
Moll (1861-1945), born in Vienna, spent much of his childhood painting, as frequent illness made regular school attendance impossible. His father's early death in 1877 and subsequent inheritance afforded his family the financial security to pay for Moll's private lessons in painting and drawing from the landscape painter Carl Haunold (1832-1911). According to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, the current work was painted by Moll during his time as a student under Haunold's tutelage.
Moll would go on to become the student of Christian Griepenkerl (1839-1916) and Emil Jakob Schindler (1842-1892) at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In 1897, he co-founded the Vienna Secession with Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), advocating for a rejection of conservative traditions, and his artistic style by this time had shifted significant from the more traditional, academic appearance of the current work. Moll was especially vocal in his support of the Belvedere Gallery as a focal point of new Austrian art, and many of his most important paintings of now in the museum's collection. Artistically, Moll embodied this disavowal of norms through his frequent depiction of bright majestic landscapes rendered in sweeping brushstrokes. Moll committed suicide in Vienna at the end of World War II.
